London - Pregnant women who are overweight or obese are more likely to lose their babies, scientists have warned.
Research shows women with a higher body mass index (BMI) before they conceive or in early pregnancy have a higher risk of the baby dying during pregnancy, labour or shortly after birth.
For severely obese women, the risk is more than three times higher than for women who are a healthy weight. But it begins to rise even when women are only slightly overweight, according to a review of 38 previous studies by researchers at Imperial College London.
Every day 17 babies in Britain die just before, during or soon after birth, amounting to 6 200 babies a year. NHS figures show that each day there are 11 stillbirths – in which a baby is born dead after 24 weeks of pregnancy – making stillbirth 15 times more common than cot death.
There are roughly 4 000 stillbirths every year in the UK, around one in every 200 births.
And around 15 percent of British mothers are obese when expecting a child, up from seven percent 20 years ago, according to latest figures.
Doctors have warned the obesity epidemic among pregnant women is an ever-growing burden on the NHS and could jeopardise the health of the next generation.
Complications suffered by obese women in pregnancy range from diabetes to life-threatening pre-eclampsia, while their babies face a greater risk of diabetes and obesity themselves in later life.
In the latest review, lead researcher Dr Dagfinn Aune investigated the link between maternal weight and baby and infant deaths. The 38 studies analysed around 47 000 baby deaths, from early miscarriages to stillbirths and infant deaths shortly after birth.
Doctors use BMI to assess whether patients are overweight by dividing weight in kilograms by height in metres squared. A BMI of 20-24.9 is healthy, while 25 to 29.9 is overweight and 30-plus is obese. A BMI of 40-plus is considered super-obese.
The researchers found even “modest increases” in maternal BMI were associated with an increased risk of the baby dying.
The risk for super-obese pregnant women was between two and 3.5 times higher, compared to women with a healthy BMI of 20.
But the rate of stillbirths per 10 000 pregnancies was 20 percent higher for overweight women, and 50 percent higher for obese women, said the findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr Aune said: “Weight management guidelines for women who plan pregnancies should take these findings into consideration to reduce the burden of foetal deaths, stillbirths, and infant deaths.”
In the UK there are no specific guidelines setting out how much weight a woman should expect to gain during pregnancy.
Experts do not recommend dieting or weight loss while pregnant, but advise bigger mothers to keep their weight stable and aim to gain no more than around 22lbs.
Tory MP Anna Soubry, the former public health minister, said last year that it was “absolutely bonkers” that midwives were no longer routinely weighing pregnant women.
NHS guidance tells women that during the first six months of pregnancy energy needs do not change, so no extra food is needed, while only 200 additional calories a day are needed in the later stages.- Daily Mail